Why Dave Chappelle Was Booed Off Stage During Funny Or Die Comedy Festival

This is a photo of Chappelle speaking at the 2004 MTV
Video Music Awards.Reuters

Dave Chappelle has a notoriously mercurial
relationship with his audience. In the years since walking away
from his $50 million Chappelle's
Show contract with Comedy Central he's returned
to stand-up comedy in brief spurts and has yet to produce a new
special. He recently joined Funny Or Die's Oddball Comedy & Curiosity
Festival with the likes of Demetri Martin and
Flight of the Conchords, but only performed at a few dates before
things went bad Thursday night at the Hartford, Conn.,
stop.

Chappelle briefly took the stage before stopping because he
seemed to feel like people in the audience were ruining his
performance. He sat on a stool on the stage for several minutes
smoking cigarettes and drinking bottled water, commenting that he
was "going to have to read about this s--- for
months.”

Fellow comedian Patton
Oswalt immediately came to
his defense on Twitter,
writing, "Dear Dave Chappelle's fans: He's one of the best
comedians working, & you're not letting him do what he loves.
Stop being a--holes." And: "Chappelle's touring now, trying to do
his usual, brilliant stuff, and the crowds are screaming, "I'm
Rick James, b----!" Idiots."

Ebony magazine has also put together
a lengthy firsthand
account of the incident from a Connecticut fan
named Lesli-Ann Lewis, who
lays the blame mostly on the audience. More controversially, she
invokes the racist aspects of a mostly drunken male white crowd
screaming for the comedian to perform for them.

"While the racial makeup of the crowd was incidental, the
way they treated Chappelle is not," she writes. "It speaks to a
long complicated history: the relationship between the White
audience and the Black entertainer. This is a relationship you
can easily trace to early minstrel shows, to archetypes of Blacks
that still define the roles we’re offered today. We have seen
more Black comedians bow to racist tropes, demean
themselves—albeit unintentionally—for White
audiences."

Meanwhile New York
Times comedy critic Jason Zinoman, who wrote a book about
Chappelle, told Vulture he thinks
there's more happening with this incident than just an unruly
crowd.

"My issue with the 'evil hecklers ruined Dave Chappelle’s
set' narrative is that during some shows he really courts and
even feeds off of audience interplay," Zinoman said. "He riffs
off comments people yell out and asks questions. I once saw him
turn a show into an elaborate question and answer session, like a
press conference. Some comics establish a very clear relationship
with the audience that is like one at a traditional play. Some
shows Chappelle does that, too; other times, like what this one
looked to be, he does not or, at least, the lines seem blurred.
So I am not excusing the people yelling and booing during the
show. They should stop. But context matters. And this is a huge
crowd late in the evening. In responding to noise, most comics
plow forward, tell their jokes. When Chappelle did not, and
instead started chatting with people, the dynamic
shifted."

Why Chappelle really decided to stop his set is ultimately
a mystery to everyone but Chappelle, but regardless of the
motivations, his fans are frustrated. He's a comedian who's
exceedingly sensitive to any perceived misinterpretation of his
material. But unfortunately his true fans are the ones who suffer
most when these things happen. Here's a YouTube video of his
walk-off (there are a few of them up). It doesn't shed much light
on the situation, but at least it helps put it into
context.